


events in motion

by salienne



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Takes place some time after "Marionette".</p><p>If second chances came in reverse--Olivia is shown what will be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	events in motion

  
Daytime, her bedroom. Two figures lie close together beneath the covers. The curtains are drawn but the morning light has trickled in, a paleness seeping across the red of the comforter, the sheen of the hardwood floor, the clothing scattered across it. An arm stretches, then falls still.

A phone vibrates on the bedside table.

One woman groans and turns her face into the pillow. On the other side of the bed a hand gropes across the wooden surface, finds the phone and presses it to her ear. She murmurs, “Olivia Dunham.” Slowly, she pushes herself into a sitting position. She pulls her knees up and rubs her fingers across her forehead.

Astrid turns her head, one cheek marked by the folds in the pillowcase. “Did someone die?”

Olivia rolls her eyes, smiles, stands. “413 Conway Boulevard, Milton. Got it.” She shuts the phone and puts it back on the table, then kicks yesterday’s pants out of the way on her way to the wardrobe. “There was a murder,” she says. “It looks like the victim was solidified.”

“Solidified?”

“Into stone. Everything but the skin. Apparently that’s taken on the consistency of, and I’m quoting here, baklava.”

“The flaky part?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

Astrid stands and puts her hands on her hips, looking over the scattering of wrinkled clothes. “Oh, I just thought Walter might like some pie crust to brighten up his day. Hey, do you have any clothes I could borrow? I don’t think wearing the same outfit two days in a row is exactly subtle.”

“No,” Olivia says, doing up the clasps in her bra. “I don’t suppose it is.”

Olivia grabs a maroon shirt and crosses the room. Though Astrid takes it, she merely looks at it before holding it up, an eyebrow raised. “You know,” Astrid says, “I was expecting a little more than just this.”

“Damn. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

Astrid smiles, and she reaches up and gives Olivia a kiss, brief but sweet. She puts a tender hand on Olivia’s cheek. “Now. Pants?”

\---

 _The scene shifts._

\---

“Walter? Walter, wake up. Wake up, damn you!”

Walter’s lab, the main office, and someone has torn through it. Boxes of files have been overturned, their contents ripped and scattered. Wrinkled papers, chains of paperclips, cracked pens. The metallic shell of a cabinet lies by the wall, still dripping with Clorox that must’ve been on top before hitting something and cracking, the large bottle rolling across the floor and leaving behind a wide trail of solvent.

Peter kneels in it. Walter lies in it.

Standing in the doorway, gun in hand, Olivia watches as Peter lifts Walter up by the shoulders and slaps him. There are no visible wounds on the man, no blood, but Walter doesn’t react.

Glancing back, Peter snaps, “How long before the ambulance gets here?”

“They said eight minutes about five minutes ago.”

“Damn it.”

Peter turns back to Walter and puts his ear to the chest. He lays the man on the floor and begins compressions. “Come on, come on. Breath, you bastard, come on, breath.” Thirty compressions in all until he tilts Walter’s head back and breathes in twice. Sitting up he whispers, “Come on, Dad. Please.”

\---

 _Olivia’s head wrenches back and smashes into something hard, something that knocks the sight from her. She sees blackness, bright lights. Her head, God her head, she can’t… Her hands are balled up into fists. Even the joints of her fingers ache. What was that, what did she just_ see?

 _Something ceramic and cold is pressed to her lips, and soon water pours into her mouth but she breathes it in, coughs and shakes her head as hard as she can. Cold water spills over her. She recoils as it hits her chest, as her shirt sticks to her skin. The cup is there again and she keeps shaking her head with her lips pressed tight and she coughs against her gums._

 _“Stop,” she wheezes. “Please, stop.”_

 _The cup is pulled away._

 _Though her eyes are watering she can’t wipe them, much less the rest of her. Her arms are strapped to the thick wooden armrests of a chair._

 _Olivia stares at the bald man kneeling before her. He has no eyebrows, and he wears a suit of pure black. Expressionless he watches her, a scientist waiting for his specimen to stop flailing about its cage._

 _She manages, “Just tell-”_

 _“Just tell me.” The Observer’s voice is flat. “What do you want?”_

 _“So you know-”_

 _“The question. What’s the answer? I am not your enemy. Maybe I can help.”_

 _Again the Observer holds up the cup of water and, this time, Olivia takes a small sip. A wave of pain surges through her head, and she groans._

 _“Are you all right?” the Observer asks._

 _“No. No I’m not.”_

 _The Observer stands._

 _Olivia slumps back as best she can, what with her entire body tied down. She closes her eyes and she sees blackness, only blackness, but she can’t refuse to see forever._

\---

Outside on the front yard, on the wet grass, agents stand beneath a dark blue tarp with rain pounding against it. Lowering her umbrella, Olivia wipes a gloved hand across her face. She walks up to a kneeling, muttering, Walter. “…skin has been completely dehydrated while the rest of the soft tissues have undergone rapid ossification. The eyes, if I didn’t know better I’d say the eyes had turned to glass. For that combination to occur…”

“Walter. How’s it going?”

Walter says nothing. Sitting back on his haunches, he just stares at the dead woman’s body, mesmerized.

“Walter?”

He turns, and he grins. “Agent Dunham! What a wonderful surprise. Did you know this body’s been turned to stone?”

“I had some idea. Any idea what caused it yet?”

“Hmm? Oh, none at all. Fabulous isn’t it?”

He turns back to the body and Olivia steps away, putting her hands in her pockets. She looks around and examines the landscape, the agents and the police cars still flashing their lights, a crime scene whose forensics have been just about destroyed by the weather. Moving backwards, she almost crashes into Peter.

“Whoa!”

“Peter, I’m sorry, I didn’t see-”

“No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

Near the edge of the tarp he stands with a carry-out tray from some local café. “Coffee?” he says.

Olivia shakes her head. She crosses her arms. “Trying to cut back.”

“You know this is the first time I’ve seen you turn down a cup of coffee. I mean, since-” Peter cuts himself off, and Olivia is about to respond when a voice calls out across the yard.

“Agent Dunham!”

Olivia whirls around first. A new agent, not much older than Astrid, runs towards them from the front door of the house. Just a few seconds and the rain plasters her hair to her forehead. She glances at the body, a widening of the eyes and a small cringe the only signs of her discomfort, and then she is in front of them. “Inside. There’s something Agent Broyles thinks you should see.”

Neither Peter nor Olivia bother with umbrellas, and at the threshold Olivia stuffs her sodden ponytail beneath her collar. The entrance foyer is small, really just an inlet for shoes, and they barely pause at the staircase that greets them as another agent waves them over into the adjoining living room. The couch is white with a flower print, and the cushion furthest to the left is crusted with something silver, swirled with red. Something like mercury and human blood. Olivia stops but Peter walks forward. He bends down to look at the cushion, and then he looks back, right at her.

\---

 _In the chair, Olivia’s head is pounding. She’s shivering, stuck in a soaking tank top in a room that would make a Boston winter seem warm. Suddenly the Observer has a towel, and she watches, silent, as he dabs at the front of her. For all that does. He moves to the far corner of the room where there stands the one piece of furniture she can see, a small table she could just about touch with her legs if they weren’t tied down. A pitcher of water is there, and he comes back to her with a black mug. “You must drink,” he tells her._

 _After a moment, Olivia opens her mouth. Though she intends to take only a sip she ends up gulping down the liquid. Water streaks down her chin, dribbles on her chest and across her breasts, to the fabric of her bra. She keeps swallowing even after the cup is empty and he pulls it away, leaving her gasping for air, for more._

 _“What,” she manages, “what are you doing to me?”_

 _“I am showing you.”_

 _“Showing me_ what _?”_

 _She yanks on the straps at her wrists, shaking the chair, and the Observer puts his hands on her arms. “Please do not do that.”_

 _He straightens, the lone figure in a dark room with no doors, just an old light bulb on the ceiling. She can see each and every follicle of dust hanging in the air between them and somehow that seems important, seems absolutely vital, because there’s no other visual stimulus to grab onto here. The walls are constructed of even planks of wood, the table is hidden in the shadows. She could be in a closet, an attic, a cellar. A particularly boring set for some slasher flick. She could be sitting here, shaking, covered in goosebumps, absolutely anywhere._

 _Something scrabbles in the walls—mice or rats, maybe cockroaches._

 _“You need rest,” he says. “But I am afraid we do not have… time.”_

\---

The man handcuffed to a pipe in the corner appears oddly calm. He wears a fine suit and fine shoes, and he sits on the filthy floor of a warehouse, surprisingly well-lit by windows of broken glass high above. By his foot is a clump of dirt, and above him is a large spider web. He is covered in blood. There is a gash across his right cheek, and swirls of red and silver, mainly silver, have crusted beneath his broken nose and down his throat.

Standing above him, gun in hand, is Peter. “I am prepared to do a lot, and I do mean a lot, to find out what I need to know.”

The handcuffed man doesn’t react.

“Tell me where she is, or tell me where I can find the cure.”

The man remains silent, and Peter shoots a bullet just past his head.

“I am not bluffing, and I am not patient enough to think up a clever threat right now. First I will shoot your knees. Then your thighs. Your groin. I will move slowly and painfully up your body until you tell me what I _need to know_.” Peter kneels so that he and the man, the Shapeshifter, are at eye level. “Where is she?”

“What’s he like?” the Shapeshifter says. “Your father on this side. I heard he’s pathetic, an old nut who pisses himself.”

The smack of the gun against the man’s cheek is loud. Something snaps. The man hisses, then spits out blood.

“ _Where is she_?”

Again the man spits. More blood. It hits the knee of Peter’s jeans and trickles to the ground.

Peter’s phone rings, and for a moment, it is as if neither man notices. Their eyes are locked and the gun is in Peter’s hand and he's so close that it’s a wonder the other man doesn’t try to kick his legs out from under him. Even with his hands handcuffed above his head the Shapeshifter could get up, could even have a very slim chance against his captor. Peter doesn’t seem to notice.

Very slowly, Peter stands. He turns and walks to a jacket thrown across a water-damaged crate. His hands are not quite steady as he takes out the phone. “What?”

“Peter.”

“Astrid, what is it? What’s going on?”

“Peter, he’s getting worse. You need to get back here.”

Peter’s jaw clenches, and he turns. The Shapeshifter pulls on the cuffs twice, hard.

“Peter.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Peter drops the phone and it clatters, loudly, across the concrete. He cocks the gun.

\---

The next one to die is Sam Weiss, and the one to do it is the other Olivia Dunham. They’re in the shadow of large tree, in a park late at night. She shoots him in the forehead. After he’s fallen, she takes a knife out of her pocket and make an incision at the base of his spine. Blood stains her pants as she pockets a metallic disk, then stains the paper bag she takes from his hand.

After looking inside, she stands and walks away.

Sam Weiss bleeds silver onto the dark and the frost of the grass.

\---

 _“No.” Olivia whispers the word. It echoes in her ears, her thoughts, only to be lost to the featureless walls around her. “No.” He bleeds silver. “God.”_

 _“You see now.” The Observer is before her still but seated cross-legged against the wall like a child. Even in this pose he unnerves her, twists something in her gut so that she just wants to scuttle away._

 _She asks, “Why show me this now?”_

 _“Because certain events are about to be set into motion. I… I believe there are certain events you can prevent.”_

 _“You believe?”_

 _“Yes.”_

 _Olivia sits up, or at least as much as she can. “You’re him, aren’t you? The man who saved Peter and Walter at the lake.”_

 _“Yes.”_

 _“So you’re-”_

 _“The one who started this war in the first place.”_

 _After that, Olivia doesn’t know what else there is to say._

\---

There is an Olivia Dunham with a tattoo of a red sun on the back of her neck, one with brown hair and bangs across her forehead, all of which she wanted. She climbs, trembling, out of a pitch-black tank, a mixture of blood and water dripping down her forearm from a puncture wound at the inside of her elbow. She drops a metal syringe onto the floor. She grabs the edge of the tank for balance.

“Oh.”

She has the gun out before she turns.

By a counter with a computer and two half-full flasks of bright green liquid stands Walter, a Twizzler in his mouth. Slowly Olivia moves around a table. The sensory deprivation tank sloshes behind her as she makes her way up the staircase and steps onto the platform overlooking the lab.

“Walter,” she says. “You can put that down now.”

He does as she asks. His gaze is cold. “What do you want?”

“Oh, come on now. Is that any way to greet a friend?”

“I would hardly consider you a friend.”

She shrugs a shoulder, then comes to a stop about three feet in front of him. “What are you doing here so late, Walter?”

“I had an idea I wanted to test.”

“Ah.” She takes a deep breath. “Strawberry and… mint?”

“A new flavor.” He steps to his left in front of the flasks, unmistakably protective. “For laffy-taffy.”

She nods. “Anyone else know you’re here?”

“No,” he answers. Quickly. “No, no one at all.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow, then reaches into a side-pocket on her cargo pants. It takes her a moment to open the sopping wet fabric, but eventually she manages to remove a small black box and tosses it over. Just barely, Walter catches it.

“Is this poison?” he asks.

“Not yet.”

\---

An Olivia with blond hair and a white shirt sits with her hands pressed to her mouth. This room, an unused side-office, has also been ransacked, only there was barely anything in here to begin with. Just the empty boxes and scraps of yellow paper now scattered across the floor. An old wooden desk is set in the corner behind her, equations carved into it. Atop it lies a note.

“Peter,” Astrid says, “think of what you’re asking her to do.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking her to do.”

“Peter…”

Near Olivia is an office chair with a broken-off back. Peter rolls it over and sits in front of her, so close their legs nearly touch. “Look,” he says, “I know what I’m asking is difficult, possibly unfair. Probably I am the last person who should be saying this, but I don’t see what other choice we have. We don’t know what she gave Walter and we don’t have the piece of the object she’s after. We have nothing. The only lead we have is this note she left with a time and a place.”

He looks at his hands, folds them in his lap. “Olivia, when you came back, you looked-”

“I looked just like her.”

Peter doesn’t respond. He sits, still, as Astrid steps forward and puts a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Olivia,” she says, quietly, “if you don’t feel comfortable with this, you don’t have to do it. We’ll think of another way.”

Olivia sits back, and Astrid’s hand falls away. Across from her is a wall, white but streaked with dirt near the ground. Her eyes follow the curve.

Finally, she says, “Okay.” She looks up—at Astrid, at Peter. “If we apprehend her, then I’ll do it. I-I’ll dye my hair, I’ll put on combat boots. I’ll impersonate her all over again. But I am not doing that unless this works, and that is it, that is all I am willing to do.”

Peter nods, any enthusiasm he might have had, might have appeared to have, fading to something quiet and inward. He swallows. Astrid opens her mouth but seems to change her mind as Olivia stands, as she walks past them out of the office. Olivia has all but reached the middle of the lab when Astrid goes to the doorway. “We have the banking records for Hannah Phillips,” she says, voice resigned. “It looks like she was paid off. Two payments of two hundred fifty thousand.

Olivia turns back. “By who?”

“An investment banker named Arnold Swift.”

\---

 _This time she forces her eyes open, and what little light there is sends stabs of pain through her. She feels feverish, overheated and freezing all at once. Squinting, she motions to the table with her chin. As the Observer’s back is turned, water pouring into the cup, Olivia does her best to look over each shoulder._

 _All she can make out are the walls, extending back to a fourth she cannot see._

 _He brings her the water and she swallows twice, deeply, and this time nothing gets on her skin, her clothes. Her head feels heavy, and she’s surprising even herself by keeping it upright. She supposes it’s possible that she’ll pass out soon._

 _“So that’s him,” she says. “The man Peter…”_

 _“Kills.”_

 _Olivia’s eyes meet the Observer’s. “Sometimes there are reasons,” she says._

\---

Olivia Dunham lies dead on a floor of concrete and dirt, blood pooled around her head. Her hand is outstretched but empty, her gun gone. There is a bloody handprint on her cheek. The blond of her hair is clumped in red.

\---

 _The crash of her head against the chair’s back is familiar, and painful, and for a moment all she sees is black. “Jesus,” she manages._

 _“I’m sorry. I did not mean to show you that yet.”_

 _“Yet? Is that what happens to me? Is-”_

 _“Is that why you’re doing this? Then stop it. You have the power. Stop it.”_

 _“You know,” she manages, “I am getting real sick of the mind games. Now I am going to assume you’re showing me these things for a reason, that they’re not just some sick joke, that you’re showing me the future. If I can stop this, if I can change things, then show me how.”_

\---

A living room beside a staircase, with a white flower-print couch. There is no blood on the cushion, only shadows broken by the streaks of pale light that sneak past the window shades. A woman in a pencil skirt walks in. Her feet are bare and her hair is wet, and as she finishes buttoning up her blouse she parts the shades with one hand.

The woman frowns, lets out a breath, steps back. Past the living room is a tiled floor with a large dining room table, a vase of wilting flowers in the middle. Past that are cabinets filled with fine china, a new black fridge beside them, a black electric stove slotted between the countertops. She opens the half-empty fridge and takes out a pitcher of what seems to be lemonade. Beside that is a paper bag folded over, and she pauses to look at it. She pours herself a glass of the juice.

The front door opens.

The woman jerks—she nearly drops her drink, then puts it on the table and grabs the bag. At the front door, she stops. “Who are you?”

A man with dark hair and a dark beard, Sam Weiss, stands in the entrance foyer. He puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Change of plan,” he says. “I’ll be taking that artifact from you.”

“I… This wasn’t what I agreed to.”

She reaches back with her free hand, as if to put her hand on her hip or to reach for something hidden in her waistband, only then Sam has a gun pointed at her head. “This has gone too far,” he says. “I shouldn’t‘ve let things go this far.”

\---

At the wheel of her Jeep, Olivia barely checks the road before taking a left that screeches, that jars her and Peter to the side. He holds a transponder on his lap, connected to the GPS, and she glances over before speeding up. They come up to the car in front of them quickly. Olivia checks the neighboring lane but traffic is too thick, too fast, and she steps on the brake. She taps her fingers against the wheel.

“I’m sorry.”

Olivia glances over. “For what?”

“For what I said earlier. What I asked of you. I had no right.”

“No, no, you didn’t,” she says. “But it was the best plan we had.”

They drive. A light in front of them turns yellow and she steps on the gas, shoving their bodies back against the seats. They make it just as the light turns red. Then, once again, the car in front of them crawls forward in comparison, and they are forced to navigate the road as any ordinary citizen might. The siren, for whatever reason, remains off.

“Olivia,” Peter says, and he is looking right at her, “are you happy?”

“What?”

“Are you happy? Simple question.”

“Peter, is this really the time?”

“She’s got a tracking device on her and we’re a good fifteen minutes away. Can you think of a better time?”

“Plenty.”

Olivia glances at him, then back at the road. A truck in the other lane passes by, too close, and the car shakes. Peter adjusts something on the transponder in his lap. She sighs. “Current case excluded?” she says, “Yeah. I think I am.”

Smiling slightly, perhaps sadly, Peter nods. Then the transponder beeps and he sits up.

“She’s on the move again,” he says. “This next light, bear right.”

\---

 _The pounding is almost familiar by this point, as if the vice around her forehead, her temples, has been with her from birth. The cup is at her mouth and she drinks it down, and then she drinks another cup-full, and then she coughs. She tastes copper. She can’t stop shaking. “So are those it?” she says. “The moments I need to stop?”_

 _“They are two that you could._

 _She nods. She thinks of a word that Peter said. Thinks of Astrid and a smile she has never seen before, a touch she has never felt and perhaps never will. Just for a moment Olivia wonders what good it would do her to change anything at all._

 _The man kneels in front of her and puts his hand over hers. His palms are smooth and surprisingly warm._

 _“Do you remember,” he asks, “how it is you came to be here?”_

 _Olivia shakes her head._

 _“I gave you a choice.”_

 _“A choice?”_

 _“To see this universe as I see it, can see it, or to let events unfold as they would. You chose-”_

 _“To see events.” The Observer says nothing. “If that’s true, then why can’t I remember it?”_

 _Just slightly, the Observer cocks his head. “It is curious,” he tells her, “the way your people view time. You group events by emotion. By personal significance. That which changes the course of this world is rarely remarked upon even by your news outlets, and when it is your people forget it. That which has changed everything is reduced to… refuse.” The Observer stands, though his eyes never leave hers. “Some moments, Olivia Dunham, are not nearly as important as you may think.”_

\---

Peter is in the warehouse, and he is walking towards a man handcuffed to a pipe. Peter has a gun in his hand.

“Bad news?” the man asks.

Once the sound of the gunshot fades, all that’s left are the man’s screams. His thigh has a hole in it, and it is covered in silver, blood pouring out. Peter kneels down and the Shapeshifter tries to kick him, and Peter punches him and the Shapeshifter’s nose crunches. He puts the muzzle of the gun against the Shapeshifter’s head.

“Tell me where your Olivia Dunham is,” he says. “This is your last chance.”

The man, the Shapeshifter, takes a deep breath. What skin is visible behind the gore on his face has turned pale. He parts his lips and clears his throat.

“Go to hell.”

The next moment Peter is standing, and the gun is pointed at the Shapeshifter. He takes a breath.

“Well?” the Shapeshifter says. “Do it.”

Peter flexes his neck. He grits his teeth. His finger is tight on the trigger and just barely he presses. Not enough, not _quite_ , he presses.

With a cry, he lets his hand drop.

The Shapeshifter shuts his eyes, still breathing, as Peter takes a step back. He sits there, silent, as Peter grabs his jacket and phone, then kicks a crate as hard as he can, yelling as he does it. The sound echoes through the cavernous space. Peter doesn’t look back as he strides past boxes and broken glass, the Shapeshifter behind him, bleeding but only from the leg. Purposefully, he walks further and further away.

\---

Olivia and Astrid sit in an empty hospital room split in two by a half-drawn curtain. The door is shut, the room eerily quiet. Astrid grips the edge of one of the unmade mattresses and winces. In the chair in front of her, Olivia examines the cut on her forehead.

“Well, it’s stopped bleeding,” Olivia says. “You should still get it looked at. Preferably by someone with an actual medical degree.”

“I will. The doctors are busy with Walter right now, I can wait.”

“Astrid, from the look of things Walter’s fine. And there are at least a dozen more doctors in this hospital.”

“Not on this floor.”

Olivia shakes her head at that, holding back a smile. She runs her fingers down the side of Astrid’s face. They share a look, a moment stolen in a way it seems all her relationships have been, and Astrid puts her hand over the other woman’s, still on her cheek. “You need to go after her,” Astrid says. Not a command or a question. Just a statement of fact.

“Yeah.”

“She mentioned… I wish I could tell you something useful, but she was pretty quiet. She didn’t say anything until I looked away and-”

“Shh, it’s okay.” Olivia wraps her fingers around Astrid’s, bringing their hands to Astrid’s lap. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know. It’s just… She came back for him. The other Olivia came back. What do you think that means?”

Olivia shakes her head again, and Astrid’s gaze slips away. Their hands are still on her lap and she begins tapping a rhythm against her knee, perhaps a nervous habit. She switches to Olivia’s knuckles until, once again, their hands are clasped tight.

“Be careful, okay?” Astrid says.

“Aren’t I always?”

Astrid looks up, clearly incredulous, and Olivia breathes out a laugh. “Okay, okay.” Olivia stands and, haltingly, Astrid’s hand falls away from hers. She grips the mattress again and watches as Olivia puts on her coat. “I’ll see you tonight. I promise,” Olivia says, walking to the door. “And you get that looked at.”

Astrid’s eyes meet hers, and she smiles, thinly. “Promise.”

\---

It is in the warehouse, the same exact warehouse, that Olivia finds herself face to face with herself. This other self stands, gun poised, beside a man with only one clearly usable leg, with a half-beaten face covered in red and silver, with a suit crusted and stuck to him by the very same blood. This Shapeshifter has Peter, and he has a gun to his head.

“Face it,” the other Olivia says, “this is over. Now put the gun down and kick it over here.”

“If you touch her-”

The Shapeshifter knocks Peter in the side and he grunts, doubling over, and Olivia can barely afford to glance over before she focuses her attention back on the Olivia with the brown hair.

“You’re not gonna shoot him,” she says. “The Secretary would never allow it.”

“The Secretary has come to accept… certain losses. If necessary.”

“This isn’t necessary. Our universes do not need to be at war. Your Agent Broyles, he trusted me. He trusted me enough to let me go. Why can’t you?”

The other Olivia’s face is grim, her stance solid.

Olivia continues, “We can fix this. Please. I was on your side, I know what it’s like and I know it does not need to be this way. We can fix both universes. But for that to happen-”

The shot is precise—it strikes Olivia in the forehead and comes to a rest in a crate far behind her. She collapses. A pile of flesh and bone and a heart no longer beating, she bleeds.

“No!”

This time it is Peter who hits the other man, hard, hard enough to pull away and his footsteps echo, and he slips on the blood before kneeling beside her. His hand reaches her cheek, just barely, but even a breath of a touch seems too much for him and he pulls away. His fingers curl together and come to a rest at his mouth.

Behind Peter the Shapeshifter has a gun aimed at his back but the other Olivia, the one still standing, waves her hand and he lowers the weapon. She does not look at what she has just done.

Peter whispers, “No, oh God no.” His hand floats just above the surface of the dead woman’s skin. “Olivia.”

Finally, slowly, his hand settles against her cheek. It rests there, his thumb stroking the skin just beneath the bone. The faint freckles there. The specks of blood. When he pulls his hand away he leaves a handprint of red. Shutting his eyes he puts a hand behind her head and pulls her up, pulls her closer, and he must feel the torn tissue at the back of her head but he doesn’t let go. He takes a breath and almost desperate, fervent, searches her eyes.

His voice cracks. “Olivia.

Behind him, another Olivia’s voice says, “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, Peter lays Olivia down onto the ground. Her eyes continue to stare at him, perhaps past him, and he hesitates once, twice, before shutting them with a trembling hand.

He stands, and he turns. “You did this,” he says.

The other Olivia can’t look him in the eyes. “Let’s go.”

The Shapeshifter limps to Peter and grabs him by the arm. He pulls Peter forward, and he and the other Olivia have guns, and what can he do? They have him, and they take him. The body of what was once Olivia Dunham is left to bleed in a warehouse in the filth of whatever came before.

\---

 _Olivia sits, staring forward, as the Observer undoes the straps at her wrists. Her elbows. Her legs are next, and she could get away if she wanted. She doesn’t move as he undoes the strap that held her torso in place. Finally, she is able to take a full breath._

 _“So that’s what happens,” she says._

 _The Observer steps away from her. “Yes.”_

 _“Just like that. We lose.”_

 _“I have given you the information you require,” he says. “You will not see me again.”_

 _Olivia nods. She stands, and immediately the world spins so that she has to grab the seatback. Has to close her eyes and breathe, deeply, air scratching against her throat like sandpaper. Her heartbeat is strong in her temples and loud in her ears. “When will this all happen?” she asks._

 _“Soon.”_

 _“Will they-”_

 _“Punish me? No. I do not imagine they will.”_

 _Releasing the chair, Olivia tests her balance. She holds out her arms, then lowers them. She’s fine. Finally she is able to examine the room in its entirety and this place seems less disorienting now, less intimidating with a door and a light switch. She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and feels the phone. She presses a button and waits for the familiar chime. “Where am I?”_

 _His hand is on the doorknob. “Remember,” he says, “that which is important.”_

 _The Observer leaves and, with the world wobbling around her, Olivia does not stop him. She prepares, as she always does, to do what she must.  
_   


**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** Written for the [](http://fringeverse.livejournal.com/profile)[**fringeverse**](http://fringeverse.livejournal.com/) Big Bang. Thank you so much [](http://wemblee.livejournal.com/profile)[**wemblee**](http://wemblee.livejournal.com/) for betaing!  
> 


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